


The Indignities of the Body

by DCBrierton



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book: Anne of the Island, Christmas, F/F, Feelings, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Romantic Friendship, Snow, coming home, confusing feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 20:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17107415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCBrierton/pseuds/DCBrierton
Summary: Diana picks Anne up at the train station after Anne's first term at Redmond, and helps her cope with a small scrape she gets into on the train platform.





	The Indignities of the Body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rinadoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinadoll/gifts).



Anne peered out the train window, into the gathering dark. In the dark and snow, she could easily imagine herself traveling anywhere, home, or across the prairie, or even to New York. And she could be anyone, perhaps a maiden with her heart broken forever by the loss of her true love. No. No, that didn't fit her mood at all. She was a faithful knight, returning to court. She had been away doing the business of the kingdom, and now she would return to help guard the castle during the Christmas festivities. The snow would be no impediment to her progress; she and her faithful steed would travel through any weather, overcome any obstacle, in her journey. 

 

As the train rolled on and night fell she could see less and less of the dear familiar hills sleeping under their snow-blankets. Yet she continued to look, living for the glimpses of warm lamp-lit farmhouses, of farmers making their way to barns, of families reuniting at each stop of the train. “Bright River! Bright River next!" the conductor called, startling her out of her reverie. She'd nearly missed her stop, dreaming about other people's homecomings, and she laughed a little at herself. Then Anne pulled her coat around her and rather frantically stabbed pins into her hair. Oh, well, no time to make herself neat! She left the compartment as the train slowed, rushing through the passageway to throw herself and her bag out the door and into the snow just as the conductor called out the arrival. 

 

As she landed, she felt her ankle turn under her a little queerly, and even in her haste to get to Marilla and Diana and Davy and Dora and everyone at home, she had to give a little "oh!" of acknowledgement. But then she was swept out of the way by a large family welcoming home a man who had come off the train just behind her, and their holiday gladness swept over Anne as well. And Diana! Diana was rushing toward her through the crowd, and taking Anne's hands and smiling her beloved smile, and Anne had no thought to spare for anything else. 

 

That is, she had no thought to spare until Diana started to draw her toward the buggy. Then she found her attention drawn quite forcefully to her ankle, which rolled queasily when she transferred her weight onto it, and besides that, sent up a great shock of pain. "Oh!" Anne gasped, "Oh, Diana!"

 

Diana turned to Anne, smiling. "What is it, darling? Are you suffering transports of delight? Only, Marilla is waiting for you, and I do want to get home before the snow gets too deep.” As she spoke, her face fell, mirroring, Anne supposed, her own. "Oh, no, Anne, whatever is the matter?" Diana's clear, dark eyes fixed on Anne's. 

 

"It's nothing," Anne replied automatically. She had come home in the mode of the hero, hoping to warm cold winter spirits and lighten heavy loads. How could she now become a burden, only because she had mis-stepped on her way off of the train? "Only my ankle. I twisted it a little getting down just now. I am sure it will feel better once it has rested on the drive." Diana's eyes narrowed, and Anne set her shoulders back, preparing to demonstrate her fitness and unconcern for the pangs of a mere ankle. What was that, to a true and loving heart?  “You must help me into the buggy, and then I assure you I will be quite well." Diana's face continued to betray uncertainty, but she nodded and strengthened her grip on Anne's arm, leading Anne to where she’d left the horse tethered.

 

Anne set her face as she limped to the buggy and Diana helped boost her in. It stung, to leave Avonlea a respected teacher, only to return a weak and dependent girl. She had made some peace with her reputation for scrapes and silliness, with the knowledge that her love for the dramatic was at odds with the practical concerns of most Avonlea households. But Anne was determined that her flights of fancy not cause her loved ones any avoidable worry, nor any practical burden. And worse than that, she hadn't even been engaged in a flight of fancy, merely stepped off the train into a rut hidden by the snow. The only available course of action was to press on as bravely as she could, to avoid fretting and being fussed over. Only, it was awfully hard not to gasp again as she stepped up into the buggy and felt another spike from the disobedient ankle.

 

\---

 

As Diana drove them through the snow covered lane, past the barn and nearly to the door of Green Gables, Anne's thoughts split three ways. The largest, the deepest and richest part of her thoughts, her heart even, swelled with affection to see the familiar hulk of the woods, the friendly ordered lines of apple and cherry trees flanking the house, the few lighted windows signaling a warm home welcome. Even the nicked trim on the eaves of the left side of the house, the still dark window in her particular bedroom over the porch, the snow-covered walk barely showing the traces of earlier shoveling spoke to her with familiar, precious voices. Home, home, her real and true home.

 

Over the smooth surface of her thoughts skimmed the second current, listening as Diana relayed the latest Avonlea news and occasionally putting in her own oar to steer the conversation, keeping it light and inconsequential. Diana’s stories were full of Barry family drama as usual, leavened with new comparisons to the Wright family, into whose concerns Diana had begun to enter since her engagement to Fred. It tore a little at Anne’s heart to hear them—Oh! to belong, truly belong, to a large family! To have brothers and sisters and uncles and cousins around her all the time!—and she reached out and took Diana's hand, thinking how glad she was to see her own bosom friend again, even though she was growing always a little away, each time Anne left Avonlea and returned. Anne was sure that the unfamiliar consciousness between them when Diana spoke of Fred must wear off soon, with the newness of being home—wasn’t she now a very worldly young woman, able to listen to Philippa speak of Alec and Alonzo with perfect equanimity? Why should Fred be any different? But somehow it  _ was _ different, to listen to serious, direct Diana than to Philippa, who always seemed almost to be teasing herself.

 

In the roiled middle of the mass, however, Anne was turning over in her mind the problem of her ankle. As much as she wished to believe it would resolve itself, the fact was that as the buggy rolled along the rutted path, each jar sent a pain up her leg. Her boot felt uncomfortably tight, and she was very much afraid that she wouldn't be able to hide her discomfort on alighting from the buggy, or indeed on the short walk into the house or up to her room. Perhaps she could lag behind, and sit down very quickly on the chair nearest the kitchen door.

 

Anne's hopes of deception, however, were not to be realized. By the time she'd made her slow way down from the buggy, Marilla was already standing in the kitchen door waving a welcome. And furthermore, Mrs. Lynde was bustling around her, inviting Diana in for tea and to stay the night rather than drive home in the deepening snow, and chiding Davy for letting Dora carry Anne's bag. Davy made a quick escape, hugging Anne about the legs and saying he’d be back “real soon” once the horse and buggy were shut up in the barn. Dora had already made her own, slipping out through the chaos to hug Anne and then back inside and up the stairs, proudly lugging Anne’s carpetbag behind her. That left only Diana to draw attention from Anne, and she was looking at Anne with concern in her own piercing eyes. Anne began walking towards Marilla, hoping that a sedate pace would allow her to disguise her uncertainty about putting weight on her ankle. She could feel that she was still walking unevenly, and she didn't have perfect control over her expression, but neither Mrs. Lynde nor Marilla made any comment other than, "Well, Marilla, I never expected to say it, but your Anne's grown out of her coltish ways! I thought she'd come barrelling in here like a bull!" Marilla made no reply to that, though Anne could see her eye twitch in the way that meant she was stifling a smile.

 

Diana, too, said nothing, though as they reached the steps into the kitchen she slipped her arm through Anne's, pulling a little of Anne's weight toward her to offer support. Anne was glad of it, both the silence, and the sturdy feel of Diana's forearm through all their winter layers. 

 

As they passed in the door, Anne shook Diana off to enfold Marilla in her arms. "Aren't you glad to see me? I feel it's been the longest time."

 

The older woman's stiffness melted a bit as she returned Anne's embrace. "Don't make such a fuss over a few months, Anne. We're just fine here without you. But Davy has talked of nothing but your visit for days now."

 

Diana took Anne's arm again as she let Marilla go, silently guiding Anne to a chair and bustling away with both of their overcoats, as well as innumerable scarves and mittens. Marilla had already laid the tea out on the kitchen table, and now she poured hot water from the kettle into the teapot. As she and Mrs. Lynde sat, Anne relaxed in the warmth of the kitchen. 

 

"It is so comfortable to be home. You know, Kingsport is a fine town, but it's nothing to Green Gables. Don't you feel that this is the most beautiful place in the world, and the most friendly? Even in the snow, I felt the willows were welcoming us in tonight. You must feel it too, Marilla, surely?"

 

"Well, I allow I've never been quite so comfortable anywhere else," said Marilla.

 

"You've never lived anywhere else!" said Mrs. Lynde. "Now myself, I've never been so comfortable as I was in my own married home, but I can say it wasn't at all comfortable when I first married Thomas. It wasn't what I was used to, but I just kept on fixing things up the way I liked them, starting with—"

 

"I was grown when Green Gables was built, Rachel, you know that," cut in Marilla. "And you know you're never comfortable but when you feel you're fixing things. Now, where are Diana and the children? Tea is ready. Dora!" The last word was shouted in the direction of the stairs. "Come down to tea!"

 

Anne felt a spasm of uneasiness. Where, indeed, was Diana? She smothered it as Dora clattered down the stairs, and said brightly, "These cakes look delicious! Somehow there's nothing that builds up the appetite so much as a journey, even if honest work seems like it should do so more. Even if we just drive into Carmody, I find I'm perfectly famished by the end of the drive. Don't you, Dora?"

 

Dora, who already had a cake on her plate and a piece of it in her mouth, smiled and nodded. 

 

"I'm sure they don't feed you properly in Kingsport,” Mrs. Lynde put in. "City people never do." 

 

"Oh, no, they feed me far too much!" Anne protested. “Miss Hannah and Miss Ada would never starve a boarder. Indeed, Miss Hannah has such a horror of wasting food that she insists everything brought to table must be finished, whether we’re hungry or not! And generally by either Priscilla or myself, because us girls ‘don’t have to worry about your figures as do Miss Ada and myself.’ Just yesterday I had to have three slices of bread with strawberry conserve, because Miss Ada set too much out.”

 

Dora laughed at that, and Davy shaking off snow in the doorway, said he wished she might have saved them for him, instead. 

 

"Well, I wouldn't really call strawberry conserve feeding a person properly," announced Mrs. Lynde, satisfied that her beliefs about city folk had been confirmed.

 

"It depends what it’s served with, I suppose," contributed Diana, who had followed Dora down the stairs more sedately. She shifted a large bundle of cloth she was holding in her arms. "Now, Anne," she continued in a matter-of-fact tone, "Will I look at your ankle here, or will we go into the sitting room?"

 

Anne looked at her in mute horror. She'd forgotten, she saw now, to communicate to Diana the plan of drawing attention away from her ankle, of not worrying Marilla. She'd thought, she supposed, that her bosom friend would enter as deeply into her own feelings on this issue as on any other. But then, Diana's own instincts were so often more practical than Anne's own. Perhaps the failure was in Anne as usual, getting so carried away in her own imaginings that she couldn't predict the much more likely course events had taken. All this flew through her mind in a moment, before she was interrupted by the outcome of Diana's question.

 

"Why, now, what's wrong with your ankle, Anne?" Marilla asked.

 

“It's the city ways," Mrs. Lynde answered before Anne could, "She'll have been wearing impractical shoes, just you see."

 

"I only—I turned it, getting down from the train. It's nothing, I'm sure," Anne said, although the traitor ankle was throbbing in a way that would have belied her statement if anyone else could have felt it. 

 

"I think you more than turned it, Anne," Diana protested. "Your face was so very white, getting down from the buggy. I'd like to look at it, to see if the doctor's needed." 

 

Anne considered protesting further, but given the forces arrayed against her, it seemed the least disruptive thing, the way to make the least fuss about the situation, was now to give in. "I'd rather go into the sitting room and let the others have their tea."

 

Diana nodded acquiescence, and Davy offered Anne his arm as she followed Diana into the other room. "What a gentleman you're growing to be," she said, smiling down at him and wishing that he were a rather taller and less bouncy support. Behind her she could hear Marilla and Mrs. Lynde talking comfortably about the latest in the line of supply preachers to come to Avonlea. Davy deposited her more-or-less gently in Marilla's customary chair, and Anne thought she should protest. But Diana was already propping her injured foot on a stool, and Davy was already hurrying back to the kitchen, no doubt more concerned with the number of slices of cake that Marilla would permit him to consume than with where Anne ought to be sitting. 

 

Diana's hands were gentle and deft as she unlaced Anne's boot, just as they had been so many times fixing her hair or re-tying one of the innumerable ties that had always seemed to come loose on their own from Anne's attire as a girl. She pulled the laces through their holes slowly, steadying Anne's foot as it flinched when each slight jar caused disproportionate pain. "I know it isn't comfortable, but try to be still, Anne. It will hurt more, I think, if I try to take the boot off with the laces in."

 

"I know." Diana pulled the laces through another pair of holes. "Do you know, this is the same ankle I broke falling off your mother's kitchen roof? I'm sure it isn't broken again, Diana. You know I fainted 'dead away' that day, I was so disappointed that it wasn't pleasant. I was sure anything people were doing all the time in books must be positively thrilling." 

 

"I could have told you it wasn't. I fainted once before you came to Avonlea, and it was dreadful. But I didn't want you to think me dull." Diana looked up at Anne, the laces now down to the last holes of the boot. "Now, I think this bit really may hurt. Squeeze the arms of the chair, dear, and I'll pull on three." Diana counted and pulled on the boot as Anne tried to remove her foot. 

 

Anne tensed her whole body, from the leg pulling out of Diana's grip to her hands on the chair to her lips pressing together in a thin line. She thought fiercely of gallant knights and of sailors' wives who never shed a tear at parting, trying not to react to the building pain as her swollen ankle chafed against the boot. At last—really only a moment later—the foot slipped free, and Anne drew a relieved breath. "So you never told me! You devious child! I thought you and I had no secrets, and here you were, keeping one that whole time." Anne laughed, a combination of reaction to the relieved pain and her thoughts of eleven-year-old Diana's duplicity. 

 

"Well, it wasn't such a momentous occurrence in my life!" Diana set the boot aside, coiling the laces carefully on top. "I'd been ill and I wasn't eating well, and I went out to call Father in for dinner and came over all funny on my way back to the house. He found me in a heap on his way in. And then Mother didn't let me out of bed for a week, although I felt fine, really." Diana smiled up at Anne, her eyes twinkling in the candlelight. "You can't tell me you'd have accepted that story."

 

Anne laughed. "Well, I did think not eating properly was desperately romantic—but it wouldn't do for it to have been your father who found you, not unless you were starving yourself over some grave injustice he'd done to you. In fact, I'm not sure Avonlea held any romantic enough personage; it might have had to have been a stranger."

 

Diana shuddered agreeably. "How much worse I would have found that! Now, I can see your ankle is swollen well enough, but I need your stocking off to really look at it and bandage it." She paused a little awkwardly, her face flushing slightly. "Do you mind if I—" she set a hand questioningly on Anne's shin. 

 

"Not at all!" Anne replied quickly, a confused flush rising to her own cheeks as if in answer to Diana's. Diana slid her hands lightly up Anne's leg inside her skirts, feeling for the buckles of Anne's garters. The sensation was pleasant but tickled slightly, and Anne had to fight an urge to squirm. Diana found the garters, and carefully unbuckled the stocking, rolling it down Anne's leg much more slowly and carefully than Anne ever would herself. Diana's warm, dry fingers on Anne's skin, still cool from the drive, drew all of Anne's thoughts to where they touched—she noticed dimly that the throbbing in her ankle had receded, and she couldn't quite remember what they had been speaking of. 

 

Diana stopped suddenly, her hands midway down Anne's calf. Her eyes were fixed on Anne's face. "Anne? Are you alright? Am I hurting you?" She lifted her hands away, hovering them just off Anne's leg.

 

Anne came back to herself. "Yes, yes, I'm fine." She took a deep breath, noticing only then how shallow her breathing had become sometime in the last moments. "I only—I felt a bit queer, that's all. You don't have to stop." 

 

"Alright." Diana's face was still clouded a little with worry, but she turned back to the stocking, rolling it down Anne's calf and ankle even more gently than she had thus far. Her touch, light and pleasant as the touch of a butterfly's wing on Anne's leg, began to sting as she rolled the stocking off Anne's ankle and foot, though it was no heavier. "There! Now, aside from the swelling, it looks well enough. Can you move your foot all around?" Anne did. "Does it hurt when you do?"

 

"Ye-es. But not as much as walking on it." 

 

Diana prodded firmly at Anne's ankle and foot, a thoughtful look on her face. "How does that feel?"

 

"Not—not too bad, I think." 

 

Diana sat back on her heels. "Well, I think there's hope you haven't broken it, at least. But you had better stay off it. And it's swelling up so awfully; I'm going to bandage it up to try to keep that down." She suited action to words, rolling out a length of cloth from the bundle she'd brought into the kitchen with her. 

 

"Thank you," Anne said, more quietly than she'd intended. She felt a tear slip down her cheek just as Diana looked up at her sharply. Anne brushed it away and took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm sorry to be such a watering pot. I just—I so wanted to be a support this visit, you know, and not a burden. And here I am—" She broke off, blinking back more tears as they welled in her eyes.

 

Diana set the bandage aside and scooted across the rug to kneel up at Anne's side. She put her hand on Anne's shoulder. "I know. But you still can be, you know. Marilla needs as much help with the sewing and all that as with anything you'd want an ankle for." Her hand rubbed an encouraging circle through Anne's blouse.

 

"I know. But, oh, how I hate piecework!" Anne rubbed at her eyes and laughed a little at herself. "Well, that will be only one more opportunity to practice virtue. Do you suppose one ever masters it, Diana?"

 

Diana returned to her seat near Anne's injured foot and took up the bandage again, wrapping it gently but firmly around the swollen ankle. It hurt less, somehow, than even the lightest touches had; there was something reassuring in the pressure of Diana's capable hands, and in the bandage holding that pressure after Diana had moved on to the next wrap. "Well, Mrs. Lynde might disagree with me, but I don't think anyone real is ever truly always good. I think—all that is looked for is that we try." She gave the wrapped bandage a little tug. "There! How does that feel?"

 

Anne wiggled her foot a little, then placed it on the ground, putting a little weight into it. "Better—I think. But I won't be running out to make snow angels, I'm afraid."

 

Diana laughed as she tidied up the things around her on the floor. "Well, I don't think I'd want to have you out romping in the woods on it just yet. Perhaps in a few days."

 

"You're so encouraging, Diana. I love that about you. It is so good to feel oneself encouraged, don't you find?" Anne pushed herself up onto her good leg as Diana rose gracefully from the floor. "Come on, let's go see if Dora and Davy have left you any of Marilla's cake." 

 

Diana shuffled the things she was carrying into one hand, offering her other arm to Anne. "Lead on, my lady!" she said with a smile. As they stepped into the hall, Anne thought perhaps her ankle wouldn’t ruin the visit after all. 

 


End file.
